


SGU EU 1

by Deacon_Heller



Series: Stargate Universe EU C137 [1]
Category: Stargate - All Media Types, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26937655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deacon_Heller/pseuds/Deacon_Heller
Summary: In this near identical reality, Destiny takes 12 years to make the journey into the next galaxy. Eli emerges from stasis and struggles to survive alone now that Destiny is more dangerous than ever because it deteriorated further on the trip between galaxies.
Series: Stargate Universe EU C137 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965601
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	SGU EU 1

Eli drifted in a cold, black, dreamless void. He was barely aware of his own consciousness, but had no sense of time. Suddenly he felt his mind rushing forward, like his body was waking up from a dream but his mind was just a second behind.

His head dropped slightly as he woke up in the stasis tube. The air was stale and stank of sweat and chemicals. He coughed and tried to catch his breath, but he couldn't. Eli looked down at the environmental suit he was wearing, and the helmet in his hands, and it all came back to him.

"Oh yeah," Eli mumbled. "Shit."

He put the helmet on and sealed it. Tapping the control panel on his left forearm, Eli waited for it to boot up before he opened the pod from the inside. It blinked for three seconds and then displayed the readings. He had seventy three minutes of air left. He took a deep breath and sighed. 

The bank of stasis pods he'd located in the depressurized part of the ship were fully functional, but it was a ten minute walk back to where the crew of Destiny had been living before the jump to the next galaxy. On the walk back he was able to draw a few conclusions. 

The ship made the trip to the next galaxy and located a star to refuel on. His stasis pod seemed to function perfectly, and he chose to assume the others did as well, at least until he could confirm it. The halls were dimly lit, the same that they had always been before, which meant there was some level of power. The ship was still functioning, to some degree. 

There might still be a chance.

When Eli returned to the formerly pressurized section of the ship he immediately went to check the other bank of stasis pods. A quick glance showed them all functional, and everyone was alive. He let a sigh of relief in his suite. Eli walked from the stasis bank to the control interface hub and took off his gloves to use the counsel. He instantly shivered in the suit as the cold of deep space wrapped around his hands and began to seep up the sleeves of his suit. 

First Eli reactivated life support and checked the status of the air quality. Carbon dioxide levels were lethal. No surprise there. The panel on his left forearm beeped an alarm. Eli glanced at the display and made a mental note that the suit was down to sixty minutes of air. He ignored it and looked back at the counsel. Shields were barely functional, but were still holding. Hull integrity was slightly worse than when they made the FTL jump, but he expected some wear and tear on trip between galaxies.

The ship had refilled it's plasma hold, and was running on solar power as it sat in orbit around the star it refueled from. Eli sighed with relief because he wasn't sure if the ship's AI would override his instructions to remain in orbit around the first star it reached and continue on its way. 

With Destiny refueled and in orbit around the sun the ships power levels were as high as they could go given its condition. Eli isolated the majority of the space they previously inhabited on the ship. He decided he only needed the gate room, the shuttle pad, the mess hall, and the bridge. Hatches in the corridors closed and locked as Eli directed life support to concentrate on only the spaces he highlighted. 

Eli accessed the stasis banks and directed the system to keep the rest of the crew in stasis. He thought for a moment as he clenched his cold hands, and then programmed the system to bring Young and Rush out of stasis in two days unless he delayed the order. Eli knew if something happened to him they would be the crew's best chance at survival. He planned to delay their emergence from stasis as long as it took to bring the CO2 levels down from toxic to just dangerous. 

With the crew secure Eli checked the time they were in FTL to see how closely it matched their estimates before they went into FTL. He read the number, and blinked a few times before reading it again. Eli scowled as he ran the diagnostic again, and then a third time. He knees buckled and he fell to the deck. He started breathing hard and sweating despite the cold. 

Eli kept seeing the reading in his head: "Encountered undetected singularity, reroute required. Total trip time: 12 years." 

He sat on the deck shaking until the alarm on his air beeped and indicated thirty minutes remaining. He took a deep breath and pushed himself up to his feet. He grabbed his gloves and went to the bridge. In the captain's chair he input a command to place Destiny in an orbit that kept it on the far side of the sun, facing out into the void between galaxies. In the unlikely event that any alien ships traveled through the area he wanted to be as invisible as possible. 

Next he located the two AMRs and put them to work on the ships' hull. For the first time since they boarded Destiny they weren't moving or being chased. He decided to take the opportunity to close the largest holes in the ship. He hoped it would take some of the strain off the shields and increased their chance of survival. 

Then Eli brought up the gate addresses for the new galaxy and scrolled through to the first highly oxygen rich world on the list. Eli sent the address to the kino remote he was carrying in a pouch on his suit, and then grabbed his gloves and walked to the gate room. 

Eli emerged from the gate on a dim sunless world of sand dunes and sharp stone spires. He walked down the steps and felt the sand under his boots. He checked the panel on his left forearm. It was safe, enough. He took off his helmet and dropped it to the ground.

Eli took a deep breath. The air was cool and smelled like the desert. He immediately started feeling better. He looked up at the shimmering green and blue nebula that filled the dark sky over the world. It was lit by a distant star behind it. Waves of light flashed through the nebula like the Aurora Borealis, making the shadows undulate around him.

The only sound on the world was the wind blowing around him. Eli sat down on the bottom step of the gate and laid back, looking up at the stars. He lifted his left arm up over him so he could initiate the suits air refilling procedure. It would take a while, but the suit could filter and refill its own tank in any environment with breathable air. 

As he lay on the steps looking up at the nebula his thoughts drifted, and then focused on his mother. She would have been told he was lost, or dead...or something. The thought that she had to live with that began to tear up in his eyes. He hoped she was still living with it as tears rolled down his cheeks, but deep down he knew she wasn't. 

She died alone, with no family around her, thinking he was dead. A light rain began to fall. It mixed with the tears on his face as he cried. Everyone thought he was dead. Everyone thought that the whole crew was dead. They've been out of contact for the long that SGC would consider them lost in space. Eventually Eli fell asleep under the alien sky. 

An alert on his suit woke him and he lifted his head to look around. For a few seconds he didn't know where he was, but slowly and painfully it all came back to him. The air tank on his suite was full again. 

Eli sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. It was still damp, but that rain had stopped some time ago. He sighed and stood up. Eli picked up his helmet and looked back at the gate. 

On the bridge Eli rechecked the ships systems. It was much warmer now, but the air was still extremely thin. He always felt like he'd just run two miles, and Eli hated running. Eli tried to access the ships data banks so he could try to interact with Ginn, but he kept encountering an error message. 

He ran a diagnostic to discover the source of the error, but according to the AI there was no error. He tried again and again, but continued to get error messages. Eli then switched to trying to interact with Dr. Perry but he again received error messages. Frustrated, Eli tried to reach Jeremy Franklin.

Eli spent hours working through the AI and the subsystems of the ships database. No matter how many different ways he tried to reach Ginn it seemed like new obstacles continued to appear. Diagnostic after diagnostic failed to give any explanation or even acknowledge there was a problem. 

Finally, completely frustrated, Eli gave up and began looking for the nearest five worlds in the gate network that had water, vegetation, and some kind of life. He took the kino remote and entered the five addresses before he retrieved another kino from the dispenser. Eli set the kino on an automatic record setting so it would follow the remote, and him. 

With the kino following him, he put the helmet back on and went through the depressurized sections of the ship to collect everything he thought he would need to explore the planets. Equipped with a full back pack, a rifle, and a pistol Eli shed the environmental suit in the gate room. 

He was glad to be out of it. While he had become used to wearing the same clothes for a long time, twelve years was too long to wear something that heavy and cumbersome. Picking up the back pack, Eli entered the first address into the gate. When it activated he slung the backpack on and picked up the rifle. He looped the sling up over his head and around his shoulder as he walked through the event horizon. 

On the other side he emerged under a hazy orange sky on a hot and dry world. The kino floated out and stopped just above his right shoulder. 

"Alright, let's look around," Eli said to the kino. He walked down the steps into the hard stony ground. Half a mile ahead of the gate were low rocky hills. After the gate closed he looked back over his shoulder and saw the hard ground dropped off into a cliff. Beyond it was a vast green ocean dotted by outcroppings of reddish brown bedrock stone.

Eli continued ahead to the low hills and decided to climb one to see if there was anything beyond. After twenty minutes of sweating, grunting, and nearly slipping he crested the top and looked around. It was just more hills and rocks, but Eli told himself he needed to be sure. He took the back pack off and fished out a pair of binoculars. 

He spent several minutes scanning the landscape, but saw nothing of value. No water or trees were visible in any direction. 

"I don't see any vegetation at all," Eli looked at the kino. "Let's see if you can do any better."

He put the binoculars back into the pack and drew the kino remote from the large thigh pocket on his right leg. He keyed instruction into the remote that sent the kino almost one hundred feet into the air where it floated and slowly spun in a full circle. He watched the screen on the remote and sighed when it finished and he saw nothing that could help him. 

He recalled the kino and slipped the remote back into the pocket. The hot winds blowing over the hills made him acutely aware of how much water he was losing through sweat. He took out a bare metal water bottle and carefully took two swallows before climbing back down and returning to the gate. 

On the second world he was greeted with a cool wet breeze as he emerged from the gate. It was a sandy wetland with small clumps of long grass growing on the tops of the small dunes. He stepped down onto the sand and walked to the nearest puddle. He examined it for a few seconds before he looked at the kino. 

"I guess there's only one way to check," He scooped a handful and sniffed it once before taking a tiny sip. He shook the water from his hand and stood back up and looked at the kino. "Too salty. But, the good news is there's water on this planet. It looks like there may be a forest there in the distance. It looks green at least. I'm gonna check it out."

Eli began walking and the kino silently followed him. He tried to avoid the deeper pools and stay on the dunes but there was no way to avoid getting wet. Halfway to the forest in the distance, Eli walked up a dune and sat down. The kino drifted lower and settled beside him. 

"Yeah, I'm getting soaked, but honestly I'm ok with it. It's keeping me from sweating my butt off," Eli shrugged at the kino. "Also," Eli looked ahead to the forest and back to the kino, "That is way farther away than it looked."

He took a deep breath and started off again. Within a few yards of the forest the ground pitched steeply upward and became grass. Eli climbed up and stood just outside the tree line. He looked inside for any signs something edible, but he didn't immediately recognize anything. Then he looked at the kino. 

"Like I would know what I'm looking for," Eli conceded. He stepped in several yards before he stopped and looked around. He smiled and looked back at the kino. "You hear that? It sounds like...birds," He slapped the back of his neck, "and bugs!"

He continued on straight into the forest for a few more minutes before he stopped and listened again. He continued to slowly walk towards the sound of running water. He passed through a small clearing and stopped again. The sound was louder. He listened for a few seconds before he realized what it was. 

"I think I hear a waterfall," Eli whispered to the kino. 

A few minutes later he found a twenty foot tall waterfall pouring down from a black rocky crag. He walked closer to the water fall stepping over the small stream and kneeling beside the shallow pool. He scooped up a handful and took a careful sip. He smiled at the kino and started drinking more. 

Eli stood up and leaned his head into the water fall. He slowly turned his head side to side rubbing his fingers in his hair. It was the closest Eli came to a real shower in twelve years. He leaned back just out of the water, pushed his hair back, and rubbed his hands on his face. When he blinked the water from his eyes he saw the reptilian snout of a large, thickly muscled creature protruding from the waterfall just inches from his face.

Eli froze for a second then slowly glanced over at the kino, and back at the creature. He took a careful step backwards and the snout stuck further out keeping the distance between then from growing. Three more steps backwards and the creatures head was fully revealed. Eli thought it was a cross between a crocodile and rhinoceros with a body shaped like a small horse. It began to growl a low deep growl. The long scales along the side of its head began to shake. Eli instantly thought of a rattlesnake. 

Eli stepped further and further back, trying to get the rifle off his shoulder and between his body and the creature. Before he had enough time to raise the rifle and aim his foot slipped on a muddy rock in the stream and he fell backwards. Without thinking Eli pulled the trigger while he fell. The rifle fired several shots as he fell. 

When he hit the ground and looked back at the creature there were three new bullet wounds on its face and one of its eyes was now just a bloody socket. Eli's eyes went wide and he took a deep breath as the creatures mouth dropped open and it's growl became a roar. Eli screamed the entire sprint out of the forest and fell down the sharp drop to the wet sand just as the creature sprang through the air over him. 

It crashed face first into the wet sand and shrieked as it rolled over. Eli rolled and then flopped spread eagle face down. He scrambled onto his back and fumbled for his rifle. He twisted around as the beast got back to its feet and he emptied the magazine towards it. To Elis credit a few of the bullets actually struck the beast body and one of its fore legs. It's head shook as it roared, the long scales along the side of its head rattle quickly.

When his rifle stopped firing Eli's shoved himself to his feet and began running towards the gate. The kino floated silently after him, recording every scream and grunt. The beast grunted and growled as it ran after him. The race to the gate became a test of attrition. Eli was not in the physical condition to sprint the two miles to the gate, but the creature was now hunting on a wounded leg with only one eye. 

Eli managed to maintain a thirty foot distance between them for most of the run, but the closer they got to the gate the more his legs felt like lead. Fire burned in his chest with each breath, but the fear for his life kept producing just enough adrenaline to keep him moving. The deep pools slowed the creature down but it pushed on, driven by rage more than hunger. 

Within the final fifty feet of the gate, Eli pulled the remote from the pocket on his pant leg and tried to bring up the ships gate address as he stumbled forward. His hands shook so much it was difficult to get to the right address, and the creature seemed to know the gate was the end of the race because it pushed harder than ever to close the distance.

At the base of the steps Eli stopped and took the time to dial the gate. The vortex appeared and flashed out over his head. Eli ducked under it and glanced over his shoulder at the creature as it started to run towards him. He pushed himself up the steps a he drew his pistol and fired behind him without looking. 

Eli stumbled into the darkness of the gate room and crawled forward away from the gate. He was terrified that the creature was going to pounce on him at any second. It seemed like the gate remained open for hours after he made it through, and he kept thinking it should have deactivated a long time ago. Fifteen feet from the gate he turned around and sat up.

He flinched as the creatures head and leg burst through the event horizon just as it blinked out. The head and leg flew through the air and hit the deck with a wet thump. 

"Ahhhh!" Eli shouted as the head slid towards his feet. 

The severed head convulsed after being removed from its body. The mouth opened and closed trying to bite, trying to roar. Eli raised his right foot and stomped on it again and again until it became motionless. He panted as he watched the still head, and kicked it once more before laying back on the deck to catch his breath. 

"Screw...that...world!" Eli panted, looking up at the kino. 

He laid there for several minutes until he recovered enough to sit back up. He shoved the pistol back into the holster on his hip. He stared as the dead creatures' head and suddenly his stomach began to growl. 

"Well...I haven't eaten in twelve years," He said to the kino. 

An hour later Eli sat down at a table in the mess hall with a plate full of cooked meat. He scowled down at it for several seconds before he looked up at the kino floating opposite the table from him. 

"God I hope it tastes better than it smells," Eli cut a piece of meat and slowly lifted it to his mouth. He took a deep breath and bit into it, chewing slowly while his face became more and more disgusted. "Oh, it really doesn't." 

The next day Eli sat in the captain's chair and went over the life support readings. The O2 levels sat steady at twenty one percent, and the CO2 levels hovered deep in the red, but just above toxic levels. He looked over at the kino with a thin grin. 

"I'm going to call it a win," He said. "Ok, let's see if we can reach Ginn."

Eli spent the next two hours trying to access any of the three consciousnesses stored in the ships database, but no matter how he tried to solve the errors, another one always appeared. He sat motionless for a while wondering if it was some kind of physical malfunction. Then he brought up a schematic of the data base and scowled. It was so vast and spread out that it would take months to track down the problem, and from there he had no idea how long it would take to fix it. 

He rubbed his face with his hands and took a deep breath. Switching to the short list of nearest worlds he made a notation that the first world was useless, and the second world had fresh water and meat but was extremely dangerous. 'Very large carnivorous creatures, hostile, somewhat bullet resistant, and seems to hold a grudge.' 

"With Greer, and ten other heavily armed people it might not be a problem," Eli said to the kino. "Now let's see what new horror the third world has on it."

Eli emerged onto the third world with the rifle in his hand wearing a tactical vest with extra magazines. After the day before he told himself he wasn't going to get chased by another monster before he could kill it. 

It was early morning on this world. The air was cool, and the land stretched out before him in rolling grassy hills dotted with large bushes. He slowly walked down the steps and looked around. The smell of grass and flowers floated on the wind as it blew over him. 

"Ok, this isn't so bad," Eli told the kino. "Kind of looks like Kansas. I mean, what I think Kansas looks like, I've never been there."

Eli walked slowly through the knee high grass up a hill towards the nearest bush. The grass got shorter and shorter the closer he got to the bush. Long thick vines spread along the ground out from the bush with small purple fruits growing on the vines. Eli looked around before he squatted down and tried to pick one of the fruit. He was not going to get surprised by another alien man eater. 

He twisted the fruit off and took his knife from the sheath and cut into the fruit. He sniffed it and risked licking it. The purple fruit was the size of a grapefruit, and covered with a similar skin. It tasted like a cross between pineapples and tomatoes. He grimaced at the flavor as he cut it in half and started to take a bite from the center. 

While he stood there chewing the pulp of the fruit Eli failed to notice the vine he pulled it from had begun to twist and coil until it made contact with his ankle and then wrapped around it. Two other nearby vines began to pull towards him and wrapped around his legs. 

"Huh?" Eli asked looking down just before the vines tightened and yanked his legs from under him. "Ahh!"

The vines quickly became painfully tight and crept further up his thighs. They began to pull him towards the bush fifteen feet in front of him. The bush began to raise upward from the ground on a wide purple fleshy sheet to reveal a pit below it lined with glistening hair like filaments. He instantly realized what he'd stumbled into. 

He flailed and pulled at the vines as he was dragged towards growing maw of the meat eating plant. He tried to roll over and reach for the rifle he'd dropped, but it was out of his reach. He drew his pistol and fired at the top sheet of the mouth. He managed to hit with each bullet, but it had little to no effect on the plant. He dropped out the empty magazine and struggled to get another one in. The second he yanked the second magazine from its pouch but it went sailing out of his hand. 

Finally he looked down at the grenade pouch on his vest in desperation. He was almost more afraid of the grenade than the plant, but he couldn't think of anything else to try and he was getting closer and closer. He took the grenade out and held it in his hand for a second, before he pulled the pin and threw it at the bush. It landed on the ground just in front of where the pit dipped into the ground and rolled slowly towards the plant before it stopped.

Eli's eyes grew even wider and he struggled to roll over onto this stomach so he would take a face full of shrapnel. He didn't see one of the vines pulling him in push the grenade into the pit just before it exploded. 

The top of the bush blew upwards into the air in a million shredded fragments. He slowly opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder. The other vines of the plant were twisting like a headless snake, but he wasn't being pulled forward anymore. He reached around and grabbed the knife he dropped and furiously cut at the vines until he severed all three. 

He scrambled to his feet and started quickly walking away. He picked up the pistol and the rifle and sprinted towards the gate. The kino followed him back through the gate into the darkness of the ship. He spun around and aimed the rifle at the event horizon until it flashed out of existence. He took a deep breath and sighed in relief. 

"At least nothing came through that time," He assured the kino. He set the rifle on the deck and started trying to pry the vine segments from his legs.

In his quarters Eli emerged from his shower, dried himself off, and pulled on his boxers. He looked up at the floating kino, pointing to his blistered, red legs. "Ok, so whatever that thing was it's got something on it that's crazy irritating. And it itches. So, screw that world."

Eli began to walk away from the kino to get dressed. "Freakin alien poison ivy."

The following day Eli awoke and before he got dress he showed his body to the kino. 

"Ok, so still red and irritated, and as you can see the redness has moved up my legs to my stomach. The redness on my hands has moved up to my forearms," He scratched his arm. "Still itches. This can't be what kills me. That's just, embarrassing." 

A short while later Eli sat in the captain's chair on the bridge and spoke to the kino as he glanced down at the panel on the left arm of the chair. 

"Oxygen is holding steady, CO2 is still in the red, but it's moved up a little," He looked up to the kino. "A few more days and I'll stop losing brain cells to hypoxia." 

Once again, Eli spent an hour trying to reach Ginn, but continued to fail. Frustrated, he decided to take his chances on the next world. When he emerged from the gate he was hit by a blast of warm humid air. Before he walked down the steps he glanced around, rifle in hand. 

It was a tropical world. He walked down to the base of the gate and looked around. He was standing on a cliff about fifty feet from the ocean behind him, and the shore was lined with jungle in both directions as far as he could see. 

The gate closed behind him, and he turned around to see the ocean. It was a bluish purple, but seemed like a regular ocean. He turned around and looked at the clearing ahead of the gate. 

It was fifty feet wide and stretch deep into the jungle. The trees rustled as the wind blew through them. Eli turned and looked at the kino. 

"What do you think? Lions, tigers, or bears?" He asked as he slowly continued forward. "Or maybe fire breathing lizard monkeys."

In the following two hours of exploring the area around the gate nothing tried to kill Eli. In that time he also found three different types of palm trees that bore different fruit. He tested each one by yanking a piece of fruit and then jumping backwards. watching for anything that might try to eat him.

When he found a large bush that looked similar to the one on the previous planet, he started throwing rocks at it until it's vines began to flail. This world was not without dangers of its own, but he was beginning to recognize them. He'd gone far enough into the jungle to see the land beyond rose into a hilly rain forest. 

Eli circled back to the shore line and carefully climbed down to the rocks at the water's edge where he found a variety of crustacean life forms in the tide pools. Eli poked at the with his knife, and when they displayed no alien super resistance he decided that were probably safe to eat. He tasted the water before climbing back up, but it was even saltier than it smelled. 

Once he was near the gate again he began following the shore line until he came across a stream that emptied into the ocean. Eli looked around suspiciously before he knelt down and tasted the water. The stream was shallow, only a foot deep and he saw nothing dangerous in the water. He sipped a handful and sighed in relief. It was fresh and close enough to the gate to be a water source. 

Eli sat down at the bank of the stream and looked over at the kino. "I think we got a Goldilocks world."

Eli returned to the ship and collected some equipment so he could build a camp near the gate. When he returned he worked until dusk to set up a make shift shelter and fire pit. He took a set of pots and pans from the ships mess and left them in the shelter. The following day he meant to return and begin collecting and purifying water so he could take it back to the ship and start adding to the ships stores. 

That night he tried once more to access Ginn, but after an hour gave up and looked at the kino. "There's no reason why this shouldn't work. I don't get it. I hate to say it but...I may need Rush for this." 

Eli went back to his quarters and showered before laying in his bed. The pad was hard, but he didn't really mind. He actually felt like he'd accomplished something that day and that made drifting off to sleep easy. 

In the following days Eli set up a very basic water purification system. He collected water from the stream, boiled it, and poured it into the five rectangular metal liquid canisters he found on the ship. Once all they were all full he would go down to the tide pools and hunt.

Eli tied a knife to a long stick he carved into a spear and used it to spear a three foot long crustacean that looked like a pill bug with small flippers on the sides in the rear of its body. In the front there were three sets of long antenna, but the creature had no eyes that Eli could find. 

The first night he tried to cook it over the open flame, but it left the meat rough and chewy. The second day he tried boiling it. That only made the meat marginally more edible, but it was better than the flesh he cut from the head of the beast that tried to kill him. 

Eli spent longer periods of time off the ship, and he became more and more comfortable on the world with each passing day. Knowing where to find food and water, and where to avoid meat eating plants made it seem feel more like shore leave in Hawaii. 

He estimated that he was adding about twenty gallons of water to Destiny a day. He figured he might actually fill it in a matter of months. Now that he reached fragile but sustainable equilibrium of survival Eli decided to reach out to Earth.

The following morning Eli went to the communication lab, and he tried one of the stones, but he got no response. He set it back on the table and tried another stone, but nothing happened. Eli continued to remain in his own body. He had considered the possibility, but it was still tremendously disappointing. 

"Looks like no one's home," He sighed to the kino. "There could be any number of reasons why no one is answering. We're so overdue they may think we're dead, and they wrote us off. I mean, eight years late...I get it. Of course, that's best case scenario. Could be a global catastrophe, nuclear war, alien invasion, planet killing asteroid."

"Someone spilled coffee on the pad and shorted it out," He shrugged. "Or maybe they just check way less frequently."

"I'm choosing to believe it's that one," Eli told the kino after a long pause. He got up and began walking away. "Come on, we got work to do."

The kino followed him silently into the hall as he made for the gate room. "Life support is barely good enough for me, and it's getting better so slowly that I can't bring anyone else out of stasis any time soon. I'm going to try to get enough food and water for everyone before I start looking for the raw materials to try to refill the CO2 scrubbers."

By the seventh day, Eli finally decided to start sleeping down on the planet. The air was better, the food was fresher, and he was more than sick of the golden gloom that lit Destiny. He laid the mattress from his bed on the ground under the lean-to he made. As the night settle over the jungle the air became cooler and the sounds changed. 

He listened to the fire crackle a few feet away and the sound of the waves in the distance. It was very calming, and he found himself relaxing into the hard mattress. A few moments later the wind changed and it began to rain slightly. As the minutes passed it became thick and thicker. It leaked through his lean too and dripped onto him. He tried to move his mattress, but it leaked everywhere. 

Eli sat up frustrated, and said to himself, "It's ok. This is still better than living on Destiny."

As they rained steadily continued Eli scowled, but it wasn't until he heard a long deep roar echo from the jungle that he decided to do something about it all. Eli sprang up from his mattress and stomped towards the gate. Four hours later Eli dragged his now soggy mattress from his lean-to into the back hatch of the shuttle he'd landed on the other side of the clearing. He closed the hatch on the shuttle and locked it. The mattress was too wet to sleep on so he just sat in the pilots' chair and crossed his arms while he waited for sleep to come. 

The first week quickly became the first month. Eli spent most of his day gathering fruit and spear fishing on the rocks. When he had enough he would take it up to Destiny and drop it into the ships freezers. While on board he monitored the ships systems and the repairs made by the AMRs. Slowly but surely they were closing many of the large breaches in the ship's hull.

Some days were too hot and humid to do much of anything. On those days Eli swam in the ocean. Other times the rain would fall too hard to do anything for days on end. On these days Eli spent hours studying the ships systems and gaining a much deeper understanding of its operations. When he couldn't take in any more information he would sit on the observation deck and just watching the sun as Destiny floated in its stationary orbit. From that distance the clear sheeting that made up the windows automatically adjusted the dimness to keep it safe. 

By the end of the second month the CO2 levels were finally in the green, so he started opening up more sections of the ship. It would be a while before he was able to scrub the air well enough to open the sections they used before, let alone bring anyone else out of stasis. 

As the second month became the third, and then the fourth Eli established a routine of adding supplies to Destiny, trying to overcome the insurmountable barrier to Ginn and the others, and using the communications stones to reach Earth. Eli was never able to fix the error, and Earth never answered.

By the eighth month Eli lost just over a hundred pounds. His hair was almost down to his shoulder, and he'd grown a thick beard over his deeply tanned face. The kino that constantly followed him was his only companion. In an effort to keep his sanity he used mud to draw a smiley face on it and began addressing it as Wilson. 

The days blurred together as the seasons changed. The summer of tropical storms came and went, and as fall settled over the region Eli began hiking further and further west of the gate. The jungles rose slowly to forested hills where he found an animal grazing in the open grassy clearing. 

It was a thin four legged creature shaped like a gazelle, but more than six feet tall. It had tube like horns starting at the crown of the skull and trailing down its spine, shrinking in size as they ran down its eight foot long tail. He watched as it tore up clumps of grass and chewed them, it's tail lazily waved behind it. 

Eli slowly lifted the rifle and took aim. The wind changed and it looked up, directly at him. Eli was slowly pulling the trigger as he watched it through the scope. It continued to chew as it watched him. The creature had never seen a human. The shot startled Eli, and the creature dropped. 

When he approached it he saw it was a clean shot. The creature died almost instantly. Eli wanted to feel lucky, but looking down at the first thing he'd ever killed, he couldn't. Now came the task of trying to clean it and carry it back to his camp by the gate. It was a long, messy, and difficult task. Eli had almost no knowledge of hunting, and he was acutely aware of it every moment.

It took him six hours to carry/drag the carcass back to his camp. The whole time he wondered if he should remove the tail or legs to make it lighter, but his stomach kept telling him he couldn't afford to waste any meat at all. When he reached the camp just before dusk his hands were raw from gripping the bone tubes and he was exhausted. 

He ate a little fruit before he pulled the carcass into the shuttle with him and sealed the hatch for the night. He didn't know much, but every nature documentary he'd ever seen told him that something would steal it if he left it outside. The smell quickly filled the enclosed space, but he'd gotten used to ignoring foul odors.

He spent the next day cutting it into manageable pieces and cooking them. Once he was finished Eli took it all up to Destiny and secured it in the freezer. On the ship he cleaned himself up and went to the bridge. Eli decided to open a little bit more of the ship, and let the life support adjust. He'd stopped trying to contact Ginn or Perry. Eli needed Rush's help.

He sat in the chair, staring out the front windows, lost in thought for several minutes before he decided that he had enough food and water for the moment. Eli snapped out of his reverie with a new goal. He called up the chemical composition of the material in the air filtration cartridges and directed Destiny to cross reference worlds that contained them. 

He gathered what he needed on the way to the shuttle with Wilson following him silently as he loaded the empty, handled metal buckets into the shuttle. He detached from Destiny and input his destination, before sitting back and taking a piece of fruit from his pocket. After he ate, Eli went to sleep while he waited. 

The shuttle lurched on landing and awoke Eli. He stood up and stretched before taking the remote from the pocket on his leg and he brought up the list of elements that he needed to collect. He opened the hatch and glanced over his shoulder at the kino. 

"Come on Wilson, let's go find some..." He looked at the chemical name on the screen, "whatever that is."

Eli took the empty bucket with the folding shovel in it and walked out into the blue and white sun light. The landscape was dry with jagged layers of slate jutting from the ground at a thirty degree angle nearly fifty feet into the air. 

"Ok Wilson, fetch!" Eli engaged the search function on the kino and followed it as it drifted silently away from the shuttle. The walk quickly became a hike, and then a climb. On a higher plateau Wilson indicated a large flat patch of sun washed green powder on the sands. Eli filled the bucket and made the trip back to the shuttle, careful not to spill any. One material down, and only seven more empty buckets to fill. 

Eli lifted off and followed the course indicated on the shuttle's monitor. After twenty minutes in the air he spotted an alien city in the distance. Eli quickly scanned it for any signs of life, not wanting to get shot out of the sky, but there were none. The shuttles sensors detected no signs of power, life, or activity of any kind.

Overcome by curiosity he circled the city once before landing. From above it looked like a naturally formed maze. The buildings were long, thin, and curved around each other. They glistened a dull yellowish color in the sunlight. In the center of the city were three twisting spires interlocked with bridged tunnels. 

As he lowered Eli saw that from the side the buildings reached up in an interlocking pattern like the combs of a bee hive. They were tallest in the center of the city around the spires and as they flared outward they dropped several stories at a time until the furthest ones were just single story buildings. Dusty silver streets spider webbed around under the buildings of the city and outward into the wilderness around it. 

Eli set down on one the hexagonal shaped spaces around the city just off the main road running through the center of the city. He guessed it was a landing pad possibly for the ships this races used. The pads surrounded the city just outside a fifteen foot glass wall that surrounding it. He passed through the arched gate into the outer edge of the city and saw the buildings organic and uneven in shape yet made of perfect hexagonal transparent yellow crystal sheets about one foot wide. 

Time dulled the sheen of the glass and dust made the lowest levels almost opaque, but the sun still shown through upper levels of the city. Though clearly abandoned for untold eons the city was almost perfectly intact. 

"Come on Wilson, let's see if they left any cool stuff," Eli grinned at the kino. Wilson followed him through along the silver road into the city. 

After three hours of walking the ruins Eli got the distinct impression that whatever race created the city was insect like in nature. There were vertical rows of some sort of language etched in the glass plates. Eli felt like he was walking through a human sized hive. Their buildings housed astoundingly complex machinery cut from the same glass as everything else. 

"It looks so fragile," He said to Wilson.

Eli stood on the third floor of a building whose function he couldn't understand when the glass plates around him began to vibrate and he hear the sound of ship engines from someplace nearby in the city. He unslung the rifle from his shoulder and carried it in his hands as he crouched down and quietly walked towards the wall between him and the sound. Wilson descended two feet lower and followed Eli. 

In the street below were six humanoid figures around seven feet tall walked into view. They were covered in red and brown chitinous segmented exoskeletons. They stood tall and lean with thick broad plating over their shins and forearms. The thickest plating covered their necks, and shoulders. The rest of their bodies were lined with narrow bands of thinner segmented plates that allowed for range of movements. 

Their head were triangular with black oval compound eyes at the widest point on top of the head. Between them were two tapered cable like antennae that hung backwards over their head. From their eyes their heads tapered downward into two sets of horizontal mandibles that seemed to flex in and out slightly as they breathed. 

"Wilson, LOOK!" Eli whispered to Wilson. "Crab People!"

One of the six stood a little taller than the others. The plating on his exoskeleton was thicker, the spikes were more pronounced and jagged. The others were almost smooth in comparison. Eli guessed that the tallest one was the team leader. It pointed to the buildings around them and Eli noticed the rows of curved barbs lining the outside of their forearms and the side of their lower legs.

They continued on to an intersection and the team leader signaled them to spread out. He directed the last one into the building with Eli and Wilson. 

"Crap, he's coming in here!" Eli hissed at Wilson. "These guy look dangerous, and we haven't had one friendly first contact."

Eli stood up and darted to the center of the room. 

"Wilson, I need a different way out from the one we took in," He pulled the remote from his pocket. The screen flashed and a displayed a glowing green three dimensional schematic of the glass building. A red dotted line appeared showing the route they took to a blinking red dot where they were. A glowing yellow dotted line appeared showing a new way out and Eli quickly began to follow it.

He went out into ribbed corridor outside the room and turned left walking as quickly as he could quietly, frequently looking over his shoulder. It led to a winding tunnel that took him down to the ground floor and into a vast high arched dining hall. Eli jogged along the wall towards a double doorway. He glanced sideways and saw the silhouette of the Crab Man through the wall to his left. 

Eli dropped to the ground behind a long tinted glass table that ran the length of the room and curved with its shape. He hoped it would be dark enough to hide his outline. Then he noticed Wilson still floating just above the table. Eli reached up quickly and snatched the kino, pulling it down.

He watched the shadow pass through the other room and continue on without noticing him. Eli got up and left through the double doors. Outside he circled around the side of the building and weaved his way through the maze of glass until he could see the shuttle. He stopped and looked over his left shoulder at the shuttle and back towards the center of the city. For the second time his curiosity got the better of him. 

Eli nodded at Wilson to follow him. They stalked around the glass structures through the dusty golden shadows until he was a little further into the city. Eli found a building with a gently sloping side wall that he could climb up. He carefully walked along the top of the narrow building following its curve until he reached the end. He quietly laid down on his stomach and watched for a Crab Person through the scope of his rifle. He waited for several minutes, sweating in the white sunlight. 

On the eleventh floor of a pale blue glass spire the leader of the alien six man team quickly walked past an exterior wall and glanced through a shattered hexagon panel. He spotted Eli on the roof top below. He put his left hand against the glass wall as he peered out into the white light. He slipped the small, flat, hexagonal crystal cartridge they'd come in search of into a storage shell at the small of his back.

A green light shimmered over his large black eyes as he looked down. Inside the helmet of his exosuite the HUD displayed an outline of Eli. With a faint tick it zoomed in on Eli. He reached his right arm through the opening in the wall and clenched his fist. The thick shell on his forearm split sideways at the seam and an organic cannon made of tendons and a crystalline barrel flexed upward. Yellow bioluminescent light travel from his arm through the tendons and into the cannon. 

A set or circular cross hairs appeared over Eli's head, but the creature hesitated for a second. He moved the cross hairs about three feet to the left of Eli and centered them on the edge of the roof. He fired and watched as the yellow bolt of energy streamed downward and splashed across the roof beside Eli. He watched Eli scramble backwards and look up. The HUD captured a quick scan of Eli's face, moved it to the left of the screen, and began analyzing it. 

The team leader took a step back as it looked Eli's face on its HUD. It glanced back down and saw bolts of dark red energy whipping past Eli as he ran backwards across the room. He tilted his head slightly and his HUD connected with the other five. A message scrolled across their HUDs and the energy bolts switch from dark red to pale yellow. 

The team leader looked down at the exterior of the building, and began calculating trajectories. It turned around and walked ten steps backward before facing the exterior wall and sprinting forward. It leapt upwards crossing its arms in front of its head and bringing its knees upwards just before it burst through the glass wall. 

The team leader sailed through the air downward in a tight arc until it landed on the top of the far edge of comb shaped building beside the tower and slid across the top of the building as it sloped downward. The hexagonal plates cracked under his weight but they didn't collapse as he slid down the sloping edge of the comb towards his jump point. He watched his HUD as he picked up speed along the line projected for him until he reached the point indicated by his AI. When he reached it he lurched forward to get his feet under him and jumped. 

He sailed along the glowing arc projected in his HUD and landed on a roof top two stories closer to the ground. He repeated this until he landed on a narrow roof three buildings over from where Eli was sprinting. He landed on his feet and cracked the glass under high weight, but he curled into a tight ball and rolled forward for three spins before pulling out and getting on his feet. 

The alien leader began sprinting again with one eye on his HUD and one eye on the maze of buildings ahead of him. He glanced to the side at Eli who was sixty feet to his right and thirty feet ahead of him. When he looked back ahead there were a series of arc laid out from building to building for him to follow. He increased his pace to get ahead of Eli.

Eli sprinted across the roof away from the dark red energy blasts that whipped past him. Wilson silently followed, keeping pace with Eli as he ducked and serpentined in between the energy bolts and jumped from roof to roof. The space in between the buildings was usually between three and five feet. Any other time Eli wouldn't have dared the jumps, but the combination of running under the fire and the adrenaline pumping through his body made it seem like a much quicker way back to the shuttle. 

Eli returned fire over his shoulder as he fled, but he never hit anything. He didn't notice when the energy bolts switched from red to yellow as he ran. From the corner of his eye Eli saw another one of the Crab People running parallel with him along the roof tops thirty feet to his left. He tried to fire on him, but lacked the training and experience to hit a moving target in a dead run. 

Random slightly taller buildings between them obscured the Crab Man from Eli's view. Hoping he lost it Eli looked ahead and made another jump. His lungs were now on fire. Despite his dramatic weight loss in recent months he wasn't conditioned for running more than twenty feet. He promised himself if he lived through this, he would fix that. Eli heard the crab people cracking the glass roofs as they jumped from building to building behind him. 

He risked a glance over his shoulder to see how close they were. A fresh burst of a adrenaline spiked through his body as he saw they were just fifty feet behind him. He looked ahead just in time to see the team leader a few feet ahead of him, a bio-organic cannon growing out of his right forearm aimed at Eli's head. In that second his mind froze but his legs pushed as hard as they could. 

Eli tucked his head and leaned his left shoulder forward. He slammed into the alien creature and knocked it backwards off the edge of the last building. While they fell through the air Eli's eyes were tightly shut until the jarring impact of the ground opened them as he bounced off the alien creature and rolled across the ground. 

Eli moved slowly as he struggled to get his breath back . He staggered to his feet coughing, and he picked up his rifle. The Crab Persons' head turned to look at Eli and it began to raise it's right arm, but Eli stomped on its wrist and aimed the rifle at its face. They stared at each other for a few seconds, perfectly still.

It unclenched its right fist and the cannon flexed back into its arm and the shells pull closed over it. Eli watched it for a second before he took his foot from its wrist and slowly backed away. When he was almost twenty feet from the other two Crab Men appeared at the edge of the roof and took aim as Eli turned around and sprinted to the shuttle. 

The team leader stood up and watched Eli run through the arches out past the wall around the city. The other two Crab People walked up beside him. The team leader's HUD captured a profile image of the shuttle as it lifted off and it slid to the right of his internal screen as his organic AI began to analyze it. In a small screen at the bottom left it replayed the footage of Eli standing over him looking down. When it got a clear image of his face under his long hair it stopped. 

Blue light circled Eli's face and isolated it. That image went to the left and pinpoints of blue light began to highlight the structural points of his face. Lines from the blue points were connected to scrolling data. He was reading it when he stopped and reached behind his lower back into the shell casing where his belt line would be. He took out broken fragments of the crystal they'd been sent there to recover. He turned and walked back between the two Crab People beside him back to their shuttle. 

On board Destiny Eli limped through the hatch to the bridge and took his back pack off as he glanced sideways at Wilson.

"Those Crab People are so angry," Eli said. "I can't believe we're still ali..."

Eli stopped in mid sentence, dropped the back pack, spun around and took aim with his rifle.


End file.
